Most radio frequency (“RF”) electronic devices may be damaged or even destroyed if subjected to high RF signal levels. In many cases, the damage may be caused by high current levels flowing through the RF electronic device, which can result in overheating that may damage or destroy circuits within the device. The damaging RF signal levels may come from a variety of sources, some of which may be unpredictable, such as lightning strikes or RF signals transmitted by other nearby transmitters. Additionally, RF electronic devices may be damaged or destroyed when subjected to over-voltage conditions (i.e., voltage levels are applied to the device that are higher than the voltage that the device is rated to handle). This is particularly true with RF electronic devices formed from materials such as gallium arsenide (“GaAs”) or indium phosphide (“InP”) based semiconductor materials that have relatively lower critical breakdown fields as compared to, for example, devices formed from wide-bandgap materials such as gallium nitride (“GaN”) based semiconductor materials which have much higher critical breakdown fields.
One example of an RF electronic device that may be susceptible to damage when exposed to high RF signal levels is a low noise amplifier. As is known in the art, a low noise amplifier is an amplifier circuit included in many RF communications systems that is used to amplify a received RF signal before the received RF signal is passed to a receiver. Typically, the power level of RF signals that are passed to a low noise amplifier are relatively low, as the RF signals have typically been transmitted over an air interface and hence have been subjected to free space losses, which may be quite high in many cases. Low noise amplifiers may be susceptible to damage if an RF signal having a high power level is input thereto.